Tuesday, November 18, 2008

How to Create Your Very Own Demon (12.01.11)

There can be entire communities that revolve around collectively generated demons. I find it interesting that one of the early themes of the Bible has to do with the Creator's effort to get folks to stop worshipping these damn mind parasites. As UF explains, "the Canaan Moloch who demanded the bloody sacrifice of the first born, mentioned so often in the Bible," was "a demon created artificially" by the human collective.

As I mentioned in my book -- which has now been in the amazon top two million for 93 consecutive weeks -- when we encounter collective beliefs and practices that appear insane and self-defeating, we are probably dealing with mind parasites. While they don't appear adaptive, they actually are. It's just that they are adaptive to the internal, not external, world. This is no different than a neurotic patient with a baffling symptom. Ultimately the symptom can be traced back to some earlier adaptation.

The most difficult challenge for human beings is to adapt to the problem of having a mind. Ultimately, mind parasites come down to the problem of thoughts and what to do with them -- anxious thoughts, fearful thoughts, envious thoughts, greedy thoughts, angry thoughts, sexual thoughts, etc. One of the primary purposes of culture is to collectively manage these primitive thoughts.

"In ancient times, humans projected their hostility into their gods; 'bloodthirsty' gods who 'demanded' the sacrifice of children. In the Shadow of Moloch begins with pre-biblical times by examining Moloch, the god of the 'Children of Ammon' who demanded the burning of children. Tracing the legacy of child sacrifice, Bergmann shows that the greatest efforts to overcome this ritual can found in biblical accounts of the suspended sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham and of the sacrifice of Christ by God the Father to atone for original sin. He argues that the development of Judaism and Christianity can be seen as an effort, only partially successful, to ameliorate past aggression of child sacrifice through the creation of an entirely loving god."

I would say discovery of an entirely loving God, but you get the point, because there is no evolutionary reason to believe that human beings could have "invented" such a being, given their dismal track record. Obviously, the systematic murder of one's children poses a challenge to natural selection, unless there is some deeper mechanism to account for it. Again, I believe that mechanism is the urgent need to adapt to the catastrophic condition of having a self-conscious mind.

It is difficult for us to imagine how catastrophic that was -- to have been, as Richard Prior so poetically put it, the first motherf*cker to look around and ask himself what in the f*ck is goin' on?! Then again, not really, if you can empathize with the emotionally catastrophic conditions of infancy -- which, sad to say, many, if not most, parents still cannot do. I would estimate -- actually, studies on maternal attachment estimate -- that perhaps only a third of parents in the West are able to do this. In more primitive locales, such as in the Islamic world -- well, fuggedaboudit. Child sacrifice goes on unabated. They just call it intifada instead of infanticide.

And in the West, we simply have more subtle means of engaging in child sacrifice. We don't kill the body, but murder the soul. I mean, I literally cannot imagine sending my son to a California public school, because I would in effect be sending him off to be sacrificed to the leftist collective.

I could not bear doing to him what was done to me -- back when the leftist takeover of the educational system wasn't nearly as complete as today. He would have to internalize all of their strange gods -- multiculturalism, moral relativism, materialism, scientism, environmentalism, etc. -- and in so doing, die to his own -- God's own -- soul. I could no more do that than I could have sent him out to a nursemaid moments after his birth -- which is what most well-to-do people once did in the West. Why did they do that? Because they could not tolerate their own internal infant and therefore not tolerate their external infant. Likewise, if you do not know your own soul, you cannot protect and nurture your child's soul.

In fact, continuing with Bergmann's flap, I think it is a truism that "the psychological conflict of child sacrifice still haunts the unconscious of modern men and women." He posits a "Laius complex -- hostility of the father toward the son -- to explain sacrifice. He discloses that, in psychological terms, the development of Western religions is an effort by insufficiently loved men and women to change their inner balance away from hostility, toward a more loving center."

The only problem with the book is that it takes a purely psychoanalytic approach, and is therefore reductionistic. But you can take the same ideas and place them in a more expansive religious metaphysical framework, which is what I attempted to do in my book.

I'm at a crossroads here... continue with Bergmann, or return to MOTT? I'd better stick with the latter, or we'll never finish.

Regarding the collective mind parasites, you can see that UF is really not far from Bergmann: although "engendered subjectively," these artificial demons "become forces independent of the subjective consciousness that engendered them. They are, in other words, magical creations, for magic is the objectification of that which takes its origin in subjective consciousness" (again, think of the image in the card of the man and woman chained to a larger entity that they have co-created).

UF compares these collective demons to psychological complexes, which is why it is something of a truism to say that a culture is a public neurosis, while a neurosis is a private culture. But there are also public psychoses, e.g., the community of dailykos or the viewership of Keith Olbermann.

Yes, they are very frightening to think about, because they really do believe those things. But it's not so much "the things they believe," i.e., the contained (♂), as the container (♀) -- i.e., the very space in which they live -- that is so disturbing. Again, think of that deeply irrational container as a sort of desperate effort to contain their own unbearable proto-thoughts and impulses. You could say that the kos kids and Olberchildren are pathological products of an insane pairing of ♂ and ♀. Leftism is what happens when you put together an abandoning ♀ and a homicidal ♂: uncontainable and incoherent.... yucktoplasm leaking all over the place.

You could also say that these demons represent the premature birth of the unborn due to an inability to tolerate reality and allow the thoughts to "gestate" in the womb of being. In other words, they represent premature closure of the psychic field, which is again one of the main reasons why people believe such weird things.

These weird ideas nevertheless have to be "nourished" by the psychic life of the parent, which is why intellectuals devote their lives to feeding and propping up their craziness -- e.g., Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and thousands more. Their body of work is a kind of pathological psychic body that is completely detached from reality. When they die, it will "live on" in followers who have been infected by these ghostly and ghastly ideas. Think of "patient zero," Marx, who is still spreading his spiritually fatal infection. Religion -- properly understood -- inoculates one from the infection, but that's the subject for a different post.

Regarding the collective mind parasites, you can see that UF is really not far from Bergmann: although "engendered subjectively," these artificial demons "become forces independent of the subjective consciousness that engendered them. They are, in other words, magical creations, for magic is the objectification of that which takes its origin in subjective consciousness" (again, think of the image in the card of the man and woman chained to a larger entity that they have co-created).

So it is safe to say that Satan is Lucifer(the fallen angel)'s mind parasite? Or is that just too weird...

who or what gave "patient O-Marx (I love it!) HIS fatal dose of the soul-clap?

To where can we trace the malady?

I typically dismiss horizontal conspiracy theories outright as most require the actors to have a level of secrecy, diligence, cunning, foresight, and unity of purpose that transcends human limitations and weaknesses.

OK, but I kind of took what River was saying to mean that Lucifer fell due to the mind parasite Satan. Or possibly that Lucifer's fall from rebellious pride resulted in the creation of the uber-parasite known as Satan.

“I mean, I literally cannot imagine sending my son to a California public school, because I would in effect be sending him off to be sacrificed to the leftist collective. I could not bear doing to him what was done to me…”

When I grew up on the rocky western coast of Norway, the local newspaper for some reason commented on the ancient practice of exorcism and how this had all but ceased, as you did not see possessed people around anymore. "But where did they go, all those spirits that were exorcised?" mused the editorial. "Perhaps they have gone into politics?"

So true. Politics is largely a field for the articulation and management of mind parasites. Which is why a return to true liberalism is the only long term solution, because it places the parasites back where they belong: in the individual. I am not my brother's mind parasites' keeper.

They are, in other words, magical creations, for magic is the objectification of that which takes its origin in subjective consciousness" (again, think of the image in the card of the man and woman chained to a larger entity that they have co-created).

Hmmm... I've never thought of magic in these terms before. In that case, Magnus, the possessed are truly legion. We just don't see it as them as possessed anymore. We call them wacky leftists and give them tenure. The possessed are not going to get all "The Exorcist" on us until the adversary feels like he has enough control. Then there will be pea soup and spinning heads for all. No,it will probably be worse then anything from a horror movie. Personally, I'm moving from the legion group to the religious group, but there are times I still feel the puppet strings tightening. Although, amazingly, I feel hope. After all, God saved a wretch like me. This isn't the first time this has happened.

Anon at 9:20:

Humans are given the ability to talk to God. They can use this same faculty to speak with the fallen. But you must open the door. It takes some effort. But with a few exceptions, like Job, demons cannot directly influence you unless you let them in. Of course there are many tricks they can use to get in. The neo-paganism movement is one of them. They never talk about the devil, but he's there promising one thing and delivering another. No our own mind parasites create enough drama for this world.

"Politics is largely a field for the articulation and management of mind parasites."

Once again, O Gagster, you've put into one succinct observation something I've tried to articulate for years. Pretty much every "activist" I've ever known has been a profoundly unhappy and angry person whose personal troubles ultimately seemed to have little or nothing to do with whatever cause and/or ideology they'd glommed onto.

Whoever coined that saying, "The personal is political," was right on the mark -- but not in the way they meant. What that most hackneyed of all PoMo leftist cliches really signifies is that private mind parasites often find their fullest and most destructive expression in the public political realm.

Or as I once put it, "Leftists always seem to have their *politics*, their *therapy*, their *art* and their *spirituality* all mixed into one messy conglomerate, where the 'politics' leaves them feeling more powerless than ever, the 'therapy' fails to heal, the 'art' creates nothing of beauty or truth, and the 'spirituality' is drained of any sense of transcendence."

Has not our very own "human collective" artificially created the worst form of Canaan Moloch "Roe" demon, to whom we routinely and willingly sacrifice innocent human lives every day under the protection of law?

And we wonder why that same collective just selected Moloch's high-priest-king-of-the-crazies as President.

I'm wondering why these "artificial demons" need be artificial. The Revelation of John mentions how the devil was cast out from heaven to the earth, and his angels with him. Perhaps as we experience weaknesses in our souls, the entities Bob describes as "mind parasites" are literally the workings of Satanic angels (aka demons) drawn to these weaknesses in an attempt to exploit them, like opportunistic infections in the physical body or teenage script kiddies on the Internet.

Stepping back from frivolity for a moment, I just read this comment by Cobb over at Vanderleun's, and it would really be a shame to just let it go unnoticed by a raccoonish audience:

"There are moments when I remember why I love old men, and they have everything to do with being the old man back from war, the incredible weary grace of a humble witness to the barbarity of mankind only finds its voice when it knows the barbarity of self. Back from the edge we are not possessed by the abyss, God help us from testing another look. It is often enough to see a steely, watery eye in prose. Thanks, old man.

My wrong mind is the thousand mile stare, the amoral logic of que sera, imbibing of detrius and inhaling of vapors just to test the strength of my digestive system, to fuck her just to see the look on her face. The wrong mind is reading yourself into the part made for Bonaparte - it's all about getting away with hmmm... what is it I can get away with?

Sometimes. Sometimes I have to remind myself to be afraid. There are seven moments of fearlessness somewhere in my life I am not ready to confess, but two I remember from childhood. One was me staring over the edge of the Hoover Dam wondering how long it would take me to hit the water and how many helicopters they would send after me. The other was wondering how the half horsepower circular saw with the dull blade never powerful enough to cut my 2x4s would deal with my thumb from a dead start. On the second occasion I tried a pencil instead and remembered the value of fear. On the first occasion I was screamed into submission having put one foot over the rail.

What matters is that the survivors of the plague remain healthy enough to tell tales of horror. We are nothing without it, our bravery empty. Ask the man who base jumps for the adrenaline, he inevitably knows no history. So we would all self-destruct on sacrifices unworthy of our humanity were there no monsters lurking in the stories of our elders."

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Location: Floating in His Cloud-Hidden Bobservatory, Inside the Centers for Spiritual Disease Control and Pretension, Tonga

Who?! spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!